Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the question. The answer is "Yes, very shortly". As he will be aware, the review of the operation of the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act commenced in line with statutory commitments in December 2021, a bit over a year ago. The purpose of the review was to assess the effectiveness of the operation of the Act. It comprised two phases. The first was an exercise to gather evidence and information. This consisted of public consultation and a review of the operation of the Act from the perspectives of service users and providers. Essentially, it entailed listening to service users and providers and the members of the public interested in having an input into the review.

The second phase was led by an independent chair, Ms Marie O'Shea, to whom I express my very sincere thanks. I met her recently. I now have the report and have looked through it in detail. It is very clear that a lot of work was done by Ms O'Shea and others involved in putting it together. I recognise that.

The second phase was to assess the extent to which the objectives of the 2018 Act have been achieved – many have – and to analyse in that regard the findings of the three strands. The chair also drew on the findings of other relevant peer-reviewed research.

I confirm that I have received the report and gone through it in detail. I have met the independent chair and we have had very productive conversations. I have also met some of the clinical leads providing the services. What will happen next is that I will bring the report to the Government, which I hope to do very shortly. We will take it from there.

On the question of whether the report will be published, it absolutely will. We will also publish all the research papers that fed into it.

See this speech in context